'"
CHAPTER XXV.
THE RECALL.
In compiling this Journal, Squire, my object has been less to give you
the details of my cruise, than to furnish you with my remarks on men
and things in general. Climate, locality, and occupation form or vary
character, but man is the same sort of critter everywhere. To know him
thoroughly, he must be studied in his various aspects. When I learned
drawing, I had an India-rubber figure, with springs in it, and I used
to put it into all sorts of attitudes. Sometimes it had its arms up,
and sometimes down, now a-kimbo, and then in a boxing posture. I stuck
out its legs or made it stand bolt upright, and put its head every way
I could think of, and so on. It taught me to draw, and showed me the
effect of light and shade. So in sketching human character, feelings,
prejudices, and motives of action, I have considered man at one time
as a politician, a preacher, or a trader, and at another as a
countryman or a citizen, as ignorant or wise, and so on. In this way I
soon learned to take his gauge as you do a cask of spirits, and prove
his strength or weakness by the bead I could raise on him.
If I know anything of these matters, and you seem to consait I do, why
I won't act "Peter Funk"1 to myself, but this I will say, "Human natur
is my weakness.
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